German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

July 31, 2010

Just days after being sworn in as the minister of North Rhine Westfalia, Hannelore Kraft had the mission impossible of finding the words to console the families of the young people who died in Duisburg last Sunday, while also expressing the grief of a city in mourning and a nation in shock.

Miraculously, she succeeded.

I don't have a transcript of the speech, but I can summarize if for non-German speakers:
Hannelore Kraft speaks of the tragedy of losing so many young people who had their entire futures before them, and of the tragedy that they lost their lives at what was supposed to be a joyful celebration of music. She talks about the how the survivors and witnesses will be traumatized for the rest of their lives by what they witnessed. She speaks about the terrible anxiety and fear of the parents and friends of the Love Parade attendees who waited for what seemed like an eternity for word of their fate (her own son was at the Love Parade, so she felt that herself). She honors the heroism and grief of the first responders and rescue workers who saved so many lives but who could not save the 21.

In the end, she seeks to find meaning in the tragedy, and I can provide a translation:

"In the last few days I was able to speak with the families of several victims. I found this incredibly moving. The father of one of the young women who died told me that his daughters death would have meaning if it leads us to rethink our values, ro remind us to always put the well-being and safety of people first and foremost. That must always guide our actions.

We can never fathom, much less ease, your sorrow. But still I ask that you open your hearts to those who seek to comfort you and help you through the loss of an irreplaceable loved one. You are not alone."

July 28, 2010

This must be the summer of Hell for German chancellor Angela Merkel. First, her party lost control of NRW, the most populous state in the Federal Republic. Then one by one key leaders in her party such as Roland Koch in Hesse and Ole von Beust in Hamburg have stepped down from their positions and left her isolated in Berlin, just as her poll numbers have sunk to historic lows. To make matters worse, many conservative voters have become disenchanted with the Christian Democrats (CDU), believing the party to be too centrist, or even too leftist, for their liking. A new poll shows that 20% of German voters would be open to supporting a new conservative party that would be to the right of the CDU (a civil party separate from the various extremist neo-Nazi parties such as the NPD or the DVU).

(For in principle one doesn't need to read the poll results to know that the CDU is in decline - lack of leadership at the top, no clear message, loss of members and voters - and the growing doubts concerning the politically correct response to issues such as immigration, so that many who last cast their vote for the CDU/CSU or the Liberals (FDP) are unhappy with Europe, the economic and education policies of the black-gold coalition but would not move to the left.)

The most recent dust-up involved a local CDU politician in Berlin - Rene Stadtkewitz - who got into trouble with the leadership of his party for inviting the Dutch anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders to participate in a conference on Islam in the German capital. After Stadtkewitz refused to dis-invite Wilders, the CDU leadership has threatened to toss him from the state assembly.

So could Stadtkewitz and other conservatives build an insurgent conservative party? A German Tea Party? Peter Nowak, writing in Telepolis, throws cold water on the idea with his piece Keine Tea-Party-Bewegung in Deutschland ("No Tea Party Movement in Germany"). Nowak surveys the likely leaders of such a movement and comes to the conclusion that they are hardly suited to lead a populist movement ("Das ist sicher nicht das Personal für eine neue rechte Tea-Party-Bewegung.") Politicians such as Stadtkewitz generate a lot of media attention for a while, but then tend to quickly flame out and disappear from the public eye:

(But personalities such as Stadtkewitz, Nitzsche, Hohmann, Hähner also show that they cannot compete with the CDU from outside the party. They create short-term media scandals, but the CDU can distance itself from them and demonstrate that they are a modern party. By separating themselves from Stadtkewitz the Berlin CDU not only demarcated its boundaries on the right, but also signaled that it is open to alliances with others - even possibly with the Green Party.)

On the other hand, one of the surprising aspects of the American Tea Party is that it has grown without any clear leadership - it is a true, self-organizing grass-roots movement. It remains to be seen if it can sustain itself as an insurgent movement or whether it simply becomes the far right flank of the Republican Party.

Der Spiegel is basking this week in the glory after it was among the three news publications - the others were the New York Times and The Guardian - that were given the 90.000+ pages of Afghan war documents. Der Spiegel crowed about being in such prestigious company - and scooping its rivals in Germany and Europe.

(There has been international cooperation between editorial staffs that is unique in the history of Der Spiegel.)

Unfortunately, the analysis of the documents of Der Spiegel has lacked the cool professionalism of the New York Times, with Der Spiegel preferring sensationalistic headlines (Amerikas geheimer Krieg - America's Secret War) when most of the actual information in the leaked documents was already known. Also, Der Spiegel used its magazine to highlight possible war crimes committed by US an NATO forces, while the New York Times delved into the potentially explosive evidence of collusion between Pakistan and the Taliban.

Will the WikiLeaks Afghanistan documents change the course of the war? That is not clear. But what is clear is that critics of the war effort now have ample evidence to support their call to withdraw troops, while war supporters (fewer and fewer each day) can find nothing in the mountain of information that they can point to for making the "stay the course" argument.

(The fact that the German Camp Masar I-Sharif has harbored sharpshooters who have killed men, women and children - as the documents show - is a clear violation of the German mandate (in Afghanistan). Those who for a long time have called for a withdrawal of German troops now have it in writing: even according to the assessment of the military the deployment of the Bundeswehr (German Army) has nothing to do with its original mandate. Withdrawal is the only option. )

July 25, 2010

Nineteen young people were trampled to death or suffocated at the Love Parade festival in Duisburg and more than 300 were injured. What and who is responsible for this tragedy? The authorities are investigating, but it is clear that the organizers of the festival failed terribly to protect the safety of the public.

Eva Herman, Germany's Sarah Palin, couldn't wait for the investigation into the tragedy. She already knew who was to blame for the tragedy. It was the fault of the victims themselves for being willing participants in the "Sodom and Gemorrah" of the decadent Love Parade. The young women seen topless at the event essentially had it coming to them.

(They knew what to expect, yet they freely made the decision to come here. Many girls exposed their breasts, many were practically naked. They swayed their bodies in ecstasy to the deafening noise. All thoughts of propriety or decency dissolved in the pulsating rhythm of the bass.)

(Perhaps other powers interceded here to put an end to this shameless spectacle. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief. How awful that it had to come to such a tragedy.)

Here in the US we are quite accustomed to the right-wing noise machine blaming every calamity on the "hippies", the "atheists" or on "the gays". The "Christian" spokesman Pat Robertson famously blamed the 9-11 World Trade attack on the "Godlessness" of America - the attack was "God's vengeance" on "homosexuals" in New York City.

Eva Herman could actually have a brilliant career as an anchorwoman for Fox News. The network is always looking for fresh, blonde, female talent.

July 21, 2010

"Two men fight over a woman, but the woman in fact loves a third man, who is already dead." This is how Anna Seghers described the chain of unrequited love that is the core of her 1944 novel Transit (English translation: Transit Visa). But Seghers' plot description barely scratches the surface of the book, which is really an existential novel on the ennui of the human condition. The characters in Transit can scarcely contain their boredom as they listen to each others' stories of death, imprisonment and harrowing escape.

Transit is Seghers' best full-length novel (the novella Ausflug der toten Mädchen was her greatest work of fiction). And Transit may be the greatest Exilroman ever, written as Seghers and her husband were making their way to Mexico. This is perhaps her least tendentious novel even though it was written in the midst of war; Transit deals with timeless themes and the ancient dusty seaport of Marseilles, the locus of the novel, has endured numerous wars and will survive this one as well. Yes, the narrator, an anonymous 27-year old German, is an anti-fascist who escaped a Nazi concentration camp. But he is hardly the Marxist proletarian hero we encounter in Seghers' later socialist-realist novels such as Die Entscheidung. He is merely a survivor, who is buffeted by the sweep of war and through an accident of fate is brought together briefly with woman, who, momentarily, allows him to envision a happier future.

The title Transit has a double meaning. It refers to the state of passing-through, which is the fate of the refugee that Seghers shared with millions of other. It also refers to the bureaucratic holy grail of documents - a visa permitting safe passage through a territory (Spain, in this case) to a port of exit (in this case, Lisbon). From Lisbon, freedom and safety beckon in Martinique, Brazil, Mexico and America. In the novel, characters come together over pizza and rosé to discuss strategies for dealing with the foreign consulates. The long stretches of boredom just waiting and plotting are occasionally interrupted by police raids and those lacking the proper documents disappear into internment camps. A lucky few obtain the myriad documents, visas, official consular stamps and a berth on the occasional ships leaving Marseille, but they always show up again the cafes of the old port: they were forced off the ship by others with higher authority, or, in once case, they made it all the way to Cuba but lacked the proper stamp on a paper to get off the ship. Even the narrator's lover, Marie, who finally gets passage to freedom, never reaches her destination since her boat, we learn in the first sentence of the novel, was sunk by a German submarine.

Marseille is a giant waiting room (Lion Feuchtwanger gave his exile trilogy the title Der Wartesaal) where, paradoxically, only those who can document that they are leaving are permitted to stay. This purgatory is captured in the "legend of the dead man" related by one of the refugees:

(He waited in the hereafter to learn what the Lord had decided about him. We waited and waited, one year, ten years, one hundred years. Then he finally begged for the decision. He was told:" What are you waiting for? You've already been in hell for some time.)

It is this agony of waiting, of not knowing, of never arriving and never returning, that Seghers brilliantly captures in Transit. It is an agony in some ways worse than the horrors of war.

July 20, 2010

The most comprehensive reform of American financial regulation in decades has now been signed into law. The
move represents the broadest overhaul of financial rules since the
Great Depression and is a major victory for President Barack Obama. This was the culmination of a 12-month push by the president to prevent the possibility of another financial meltdown like the global crises that 2007 that nearly plunged the US into a second Great Depression. Needless to say Wall Street fought bitterly to derail the legislation, which leaves
few corners of the financial industry untouched. It establishes new
consumer protections, gives regulators greater power to dismantle
troubled firms, and limits a range of risky trading activities in a way
that would curb bank profits.

This is President Obama's second historic legislative victory, following last spring's overhaul of the health care system which put the US on the path to universal health care.

European observers of the White House have been highly critical of President Obama because of the perceived slow pace of the "Change" that was promised in the 2008 presidential campaign. But, as Günther Nonnenmacher points out in the FAZ, this criticism of the president is often the result of ignorance in how governance works in the United States:

(Every president has to learn the hard way that the American
founding fathers devised the Constitution not to make governing easy, but
rather difficult. Compared to the obstacles (“checks and balances”) which in
Washington limit the power of the president, the predictable majorities in a
parliamentary system actually permit the prime minister to push through
legislation much more easily.

Ernst Fraenkel, who after returning from exile in the United
States was one of the founders ofpolitical science in Germany, was one of the first to point out that the
most powerful parliament in the world does not reside on the Thames, but rather
on the Potomac in Washington.)

July 16, 2010

The Vatican issued a document (English - Deutsch) which explicitly compares the sexual abuse of children with the ordination of women as priests as equally grave "delicts":

1° With due regard for can. 1378 of the Code of Canon Law, both the one who
attempts to confer sacred ordination on a woman, and she who attempts to receive
sacred ordination, incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to
the Apostolic See.

There was, of course, anger at the suggestion that ordaining women as priests was somehow just as egregious a crime as raping a child:

But what astonished many Catholics was the inclusion of the attempt to
ordain women in a list of the “more grave delicts,” or offenses, which
included pedophilia, as well as heresy, apostasy and schism. The issue,
some critics said, was less the ordination of women, which is not
discussed seriously inside the church hierarchy, but the Vatican’s
suggestion that pedophilia is a comparable crime in a document billed a
response to the sexual abuse crisis.

But this is just a natural extension of the doctrine of priestly
celibacy which is at the core of the epidemic of sexual child abuse in
the church and the traditional hostility towards women. This has been
analyzed extensively by Eugen Drewermann in his seminal work Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals.as well as by the theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann in her 1990 book Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven . Ranke-Heinemann writes eloquently on the celibatarian oppression of women in the Roman Catholic Chuch:

To
anyone taking an overall view of the repression and suppression of women, their
denigration and disparagement, the whole of ecclesiastical history seems one
long series of narrow-minded, arbitrary male impositions upon the opposite sex.
This tyranny still endures. The subjection of woman to man has remained a
theologian's postulate throughout, and the male-dominated Church of today
continues to regard that subjection as a God-given dogma. It has never grasped
that the reality of the Church is founded on the common humanity and fellowship
of man and woman. The apartheid practised against women by the rules of the
Church is as much of an affront to justice as political apartheid. Far from
improving matters, their invocation of divine authority merely imparts a
blasphemous flavour to an unjust mode of conduct. Above all, though, a purely
masculine Church has long ceased to be a church in the full sense, however it
may style itself, because masculine arrogance has prompted it to dispense with
one vital aspect of the catholicity - the universality - of which it should be
a living example. (...)The
masculine Church has reduced Christianity to a shrunken relic of its original
self, a desiccated celibatarians' credo.

July 13, 2010

Bavaria and Texas have much in common: both are large, wealthy states on the southernmost border of their respective nations. Both consider themselves sovereign states, have their own dialects, and are deeply conservative. In fact, Bavaria/Bayern is often called the "Texas" of Germany. It turns out there is something else that unites the two states: both are under sway of religious fanatics:

(High school graduates in Bavara should be familiar with the religious practices in the United States. That is in the required lesson plan. But the Bavarian culture ministry was not happy with the way that the Conelsen publishing house dealt with the topic in its new English text book Context 21. In particular, Munich took strong exception to the portrayal of religious fundalmentalism in the US. The publisher had to redo the five-page chapter on the topic. The state of Bavaria is now satisfied: "The new version is totally acceptable", said Luwif Unger, the spokesman for the state minister.)

It turns out that the original version of the text - which has been accepted by every other state in the Federal Republic - was based on author Susan Jacoby's 2006 book The Age of Unreason (please see my review here). In her book Jacoby points out that a literal interpretation of the Bible, the hallmark of Christian fundamentalism, is generally found among poorly educated Americans. It was the implication that these Christians are somehow ignorant that disturbed the German evangelical Web site IDEA, who complained to the Bavarian state ministry.

It turns out that Bavaria - like the US state of Texas - does not necessarily agree with the separation of church and state. In fact, the goal of public education in Bavaria has a specific religious flavor:

(The top educational goals are reverance for god, respect for
religious conviction and the dignity of humanity, self-control, a sense
of and joy for responsibility, willingness to help, open-mindedness for
the truth, the good and the beautiful and responsibility for nature and
environment.)

This pretty much overlaps with the perspective of the Texas Board of Education, except for the part about the "responsibility for nature and environment."

Recently Texas adopted a social studies and history
curriculum Friday that amends or waters down the teaching of religious
freedoms, America's relationship with the U.N. and hundreds of other
items.

One big difference between Texas and Bavaria: Bavarian schools - despite the intrusion of religious zealots - are the best in Germany with respect to educational outcomes, while Texas public schools rank among the worst-performing in the US.

July 10, 2010

Germany failed to make it into the finals, but all in all it was a successful World Cup for the young, multicultural team, which also won praise from the international community. Still, the recriminations have started from certain quarters. Michael Paulwitz, a commentator for Der Stürmer Junge Freiheit, provides us with a völkisch analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the German team.

For Paulwitz, the success of the German team does NOT represent a triumph of multiculturalism - far from it. The real strength of the team was its Führer - or rather, coach:

(Miroslav Klose, Lukas Podolski and Piotr Trochowski aren't really Poles at all, but rather Germans from Oppeln, Gleiwitz and Dirshaus. Podolski is part or the "fluid ethnicity" that existed in Upper Silesia even before the Polish annexation. But he is still an ethnic German.)

Paulwitz can even accept some of the other other "Migranten" players, since they have a German parent and are therefore at least halbblutig and therefore Mischlinge. Even the black player - Cacau from Brazil - elicits some sympathy, since he is a devout Christian, which compensates somewhat for his ethnic weakness.

Paulwitz has nothing but condemnation for the "Turk" - Mesut Özil - not only because he is a Muslim, but because he has become rich and famous with his German passport and yet still retains much of his ethnic heritage. Interesting to read the comments as well, for many of the readers blamed the loss to Spain on Özil - conveniently ignoring the fact that it was Özi's brilliant play that got them into the semi-final round. They also bemoan the absence of the vollblutig German Thomas Müller (Dieser ist tief in seiner bayerischen Heimat und Kultur verwurzelt / He is deeply rooted in his Bavarian homeland and cutlure), and they point to the ethnic cohesion of the Spanish team as the key to their victory over the "Multikulti" German team.

But I will give Paulwitz some credit for his more imaginative and nuanced racism which compares favorably to the crude racism of his sister publication in the the US - Alternative Right. Check out the piece on the World Cup: White Man's Game.

Facebook,
the social-network service that started in a Harvard dorm room just six
years ago, is growing at a dizzying rate around the globe, surging to
nearly 500 million users, from 200 million users just 15 months ago, writes The New York Times’s Miguel Helft.

In country after country, Facebook is cementing itself as the leader
and often displacing other social networks, much as it outflanked MySpace in the United States. In Britain, for example, Facebook made the formerly popular Bebo all but irrelevant, forcing AOL to sell the site at a huge loss two years after it bought it for $850 million. In Germany, Facebook surpassed StudiVZ, which until February was the dominant social network there.

According to this chart, StudiVZ is no longer even among the top three German social networking sites:

That's not to say that everyone is thrilled with Facebook's global dominance. The German media is reporting with some Schadenfreude that Facebook is losing users in the US. And the German government will try to drag Facebook back into court - this time for violating Germany's privacy protection laws. But none of this will stop the site's relentless march: Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now boasting that it is "almost guaranteed" that he will soon have one billion users.